Most households today possess multiple types of electronic consumer devices, such as televisions, stereo radios, digital video disk players, video cassette recorders, set-top cable television boxes and set-top satellite boxes. Manufacturers of such electronic consumer devices typically supply a remote control device along with each electronic consumer device. It is, therefore, common for a consumer who has multiple electronic consumer devices to have multiple remote control devices.
A remote control device typically controls a selected electronic consumer device by transmitting infrared operational signals to the selected electronic consumer device. The operational signals contain key codes of a codeset associated with the selected electronic consumer device. Each key code corresponds to a function of the selected electronic consumer device, such as power on, power off, volume up, volume down, mute, play, stop, select, channel up, channel down, etc. In order to avoid the situation where a remote control device operates an electronic consumer device other than the intended one, manufacturers sometimes use distinct codesets for the communication between various electronic consumer devices and their associated remote control devices. The codesets can differ from each other not only by the bit patterns assigned to various functions of the associated electronic consumer device, but also by the timing information that describes how the key codes are modulated onto carrier signals to generate operational signals.
Consumers may find it inconvenient to operate their electronic consumer devices using multiple remote control devices. Thus, a consumer may wish to operate multiple electronic consumer devices using a single remote control device. A single remote control device can store many codesets so that the remote control device can control a corresponding large number of different electronic consumer devices. There are, however, thousands of codesets in use in electronic consumer devices today. A consumer might find it tedious and confusing to program a single remote control device with all of the appropriate codesets for the electronic consumer devices in his household.
A method is sought for easily programming a remote control device to operate various selected electronic consumer devices.